The Selling Power of Customer Advisory Boards
54By Eyal Danon, CEO of Ignite Advisory Group
Now more than ever it is imperative to create an intimate recurring forum for your senior executives at client and prospect organizations. These are the individuals that hold the purse strings and drive their businesses' purchasing decisions. A customer advisory board is just that...a means of generating an open, ongoing, substantial dialog with your key target audience - C level executives. Many Fortune 500 corporations utilize customer advisory boards at some level, either geographically or departmentally focused, and you can too.
The small to midsize company can benefit greatly from customer advisory boards. You already spend inordinate amounts of time knocking on the perpetually-closed doors of senior executives trying to demonstrate and sell your wares. Why not leverage a proven "sales" technique that opens those doors wide open for you, continually? This is what a customer advisory board can do for your business. It fosters a trusting, legitimate "peer to peer" relationship between you and the participant as well as between the participants themselves. In turn, you have the rare opportunity of getting into the minds of these often untouchable senior executives. Moreover, while the last thing you want to do in these senior level forums is promote your products and services, you do have a beautiful opportunity to "sell" your offerings in the softest of manners. Simply by interacting with these customers and prospects, the value and utility of your offerings will most certainly come out.
Furthermore, with the overly stressed financial state of our country and the world, your organization is likely entering or already in belt-tightening mode. You can no longer afford those expensive golf outings and five-star dinners with clients and prospects. A customer advisory board is the best investment you can make with your marketing dollars. Instead of a one- time costly event, you are able to tap into a continuous feedback mechanism that allows you to use the insights as marketing tools. It is an underutilized tool that has tremendous benefits. And you don't even pay for these executives to attend! If done right, they will fight for the privilege of becoming a member of your selective customer advisory board. A customer advisory board will simply yield far greater benefits than any other sales technique you have tried before.
In definition, a customer advisory board brings together high-level executives from 10 to 12 of your top customers or prospects into an active and lively community. Your advisory board is ideally centered on common interests and concerns of both you and your participants. This helps to drive as much mutual benefit as possible for all parties. While doing so, you and your organization are granted unimpeded access to the insights you need to sell more, all while solidly positioning your company with the people who matter.
